Pete's Dragon Review

In case you couldn't tell by the trailers, there isn't much connecting this movie to the original 1977 movie asides from an invisible green dragon named Elliot and a boy named Pete. If you think about it, there are some other basic similarities, such as a woman who adopts Pete, whose father swears he saw a dragon. But there's no conniving Dr. Terminus, no adorable town named Passamaquoddy (yes, I got that right on my first try), no abusive foster parents, no lighthouse, and no songs. The trailers quotes a critic who said that this is a new Disney classic, which may or may not be true, but assuming that it is true, I should go out of my way to clarify that I prefer the original, and as a colorful musical it will always be the greater classic.

That having been said, this year's Pete's Dragon is good. While it doesn't quite match The Good Dinosaur's landscapes, it's visually arresting. Elliot is a graceful creature that's enjoyable to watch, and this movie gives you plenty of him. It has good senses of music and pacing that work well together, and scenes end where they're naturally supposed to end. If you watch enough films, you know that that's hard to do, so I applaud Pete's Dragon for having a good feel for its scenes and the progression of its story. It doesn't move too fast or too slow, so by the end of the movie you feel that you've watch a really solid, complete final product.

The actors - and their characters - have good chemistry with each other, and there's nobody in this film that I really dislike. Perhaps it's because this movie doesn't villainize anyone, or perhaps it's because it has the just the right amount of characters. However, I might point that Bryce Dallas Howard's character, Grace, does compete with Pete as the film's main protagonist. It's a minor flaw, since here character is likable, and her chemistry with Pete is believable, but it's worth pointing out in a critical response to the film. It isn't bad that her character commands the audience's sympathy and takes up screen time, since her equivalent in the original movie had her own scenes and even a musical number, but it's worth pointing out that I connected with her character more than Pete, whose name is in the title. In the original film, I could relate to Pete more, since he had clear, strong desires. In this movie, I understood Bryce Dallas Howard's desires, Karl Urban's desires, and even the nonspeaking dragon's desires, but Elliot's desires weren't as clear, or at least they weren't as easy to get behind. He simply wants to stay in the woods with Elliot, but I as the moviegoer know that he needs to have a family, so I'm not invested in his goals. After all, what is he going to do once he gets back into the woods to stay with Elliot? In the grand scheme of things, what does he want out of life that he'll get by being a hermit? Those aren't motives that I can root for in quite the same way as I did for the original Pete, who wanted to get away from his abusive foster family.

None of this means that Pete is an unlikable character. He is likable. He's an adorable kid. Like Bryce Dallas Howard, you really care for him. It's just that you relate more to the woman who loves the kid than you do the kid himself. It's possible to love someone without relating to them, and that's how I'd describe Pete, which created a minor issue when he was the main character of this movie.

All that having been said, Pete makes sense. I don't relate to his desire to stay alone in the woods, but I understand it. He was orphaned at an early age, and that's all he knows. Furthermore, his relationship with Elliot is believable, and I completely buy into it. The film gives us plenty of time to show us the bond between these two characters, and you do get invested in them. It gives this movie a lot of heart.

And maybe that's why there's a trailer saying that this is a new Disney classic. It might not be a musical, but it still has heart. It's good for families, because it speaks to adults and children alike. It's incredibly simple and doesn't get bogged down in details that distract from the core story. If you're okay with a simply movie, then I think that you'll enjoy it. So long as you don't go in expecting it to be as classic as the original and judge it on its own merits, there shouldn't be any problem. I don't think that anyone's going into Pete's Dragon with inflated expectations, so not too many people are going to be disappointed by it. It's a solid film that lives up to its advertising, so if you were a little interested in this film, it's a safe bet. That's more than can be said for some other movies that had excellent trailers.